A Bird in the House – Margaret Laurence

Ah, the profound satisfaction of picking up the right book at the right time. The subject of this first post is the novel A Bird in the House (1970) by beloved Canadian author Margaret Laurence. This series of short stories chronicles a writer’s recollection of her childhood in the small fictional town of Manawaka, Manitoba. When our featured reader picked up the novel at age sixteen she felt a profound connection to the text’s depiction of childhood and the awakening of the creative self.

“[If they were] going through a period of time when they were very inspired and had a lot of creative energy and wanted to be reminded of how difficult it can be when you have that creative energy and you can’t do anything about it. If you were in a position where you wanted to be more appreciative of your creative liberties at hand.”